Monday, 29 December 2008

"Which, from the carcass of the old world free, Creates a new world." (John Donne)

Just a quick note to alert you to a very interesting Radio 4 discussion about "mainstream" and "avant-garde" between the experimental writer and anti-novelist Stewart Home, Tom McCarthy (at one point author of the bestselling novel "Reindeer") and Hari Kunzru.

They all expressed valid points. Unfortunately, when the subject is so vast and the time so limited, speakers cannot avoid making broad generalizations.

My own point of view is very similar to Hari Kunzru's, but I also agreed with Tom's idea of "vanguard", although I didn't know any of the names or works he mentioned, with the exception of Joyce's Finnegans Wake.

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Alessandro Gallenzi is the founder of Alma Books and Alma Classics, and the successor of John Calder at the helm of Calder Publications. As well as being a literary publisher, he is a translator, a poet, a playwright and a novelist. His collection of poetry Modern Bestiary - Ars Poetastrica was published in 2005 to critical acclaim and his novel Bestseller was published in 2010.

Alma Books publishes from fifteen to twenty titles a year, mostly contemporary literary fiction, taking around sixty per cent of its titles from English-language originals, while the rest are translations from other languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, German and Japanese. Alma Books also publishes two or three non-fiction titles each year.

Alma Classics aims to publish the greatest recognized masterpieces of all time, from every literature and genre, but also tries to redefine and enrich the classics canon by promoting unjustly neglected works of enduring significance. Recently Alma Classics launched Overture Publishing, which provides a series of beautifully produced opera and classical-music guides which are unique in the English language.